Tony.Williams wrote:A classic case of a common kind of political decision-making:

"This situation is unacceptable, something must be done.
This is something, therefore it must be done."

I believe it's incremental:

A) This might work
B) I haven't seen any better ideas, try it.
A) Hmm didn't work
B) Oh, are you sure can you try again
C) So What are you doing to fix it?
B) Erm this
C) OK Let me know how that works
A) Doesn't seem to be working.
B) Can you just try harder. Do this twice as much or something.
A) OK... No this really doesn't work.
B) Look we've sunk too much into this to turn back now. Just keep trying if we do more tests we might find something that works.
C) So is this working?
B) Erm it's not ideal but it's the best we've got
C) OK well we're putting our reputations on the line here we need to make this work.
B) Absolutely you can count on me.
A) Nothing seems to make a lot of difference I've tried everything I can think of.
B) Have you tried paying people to say it works?
A) You're fucking mental mate.

But there's also the aspect of doing what the NFU want them to do. Instead of pointing out that it won't help, they waste tens of millions of taxpayers money to placate an organisation that donates a few million to the Tory party.

Bovine TB will only be dealt with by addressing the "bovine" part of the problem. There's no political will to address this.